"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
Edmund Burke. What happened on this Day in History?

Thursday, April 19, 2012

This day in History: Apr 19, 1775: The American Revolution begins

At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture
Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to
find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on
the town's common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the
outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment's hesitation the
Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the "shot heard around
the world" was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket
smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended,
eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one
British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.

By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts,
where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and
trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops
occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the
British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from England to
seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American
insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against the
Patriot arsenal at Concord and capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington.

The
Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a military action by the
British for some time, and upon learning of the British plan, Patriots Paul Revere
and William Dawes were ordered to set out to rouse the militiamen and
warn Adams and Hancock. When the British troops arrived at Lexington,
Adams, Hancock, and Revere had already fled to Philadelphia, and a group
of militiamen were waiting. The Patriots were routed within minutes,
but warfare had begun, leading to calls to arms across the Massachusetts
countryside.

When the British troops reached Concord at about 7
a.m., they found themselves encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots.
They managed to destroy the military supplies the Americans had
collected but were soon advanced against by a gang of minutemen, who
inflicted numerous casualties. Lieutenant Colonel Frances Smith, the
overall commander of the British force, ordered his men to return to
Boston without directly engaging the Americans. As the British retraced
their 16-mile journey, their lines were constantly beset by Patriot
marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone
walls. At Lexington, Captain Parker's militia had its revenge, killing
several British soldiers as the Red Coats hastily marched through his
town. By the time the British finally reached the safety of Boston,
nearly 300 British soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in
action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.

The battles of Lexington and Concord
were the first battles of the American Revolution, a conflict that
would escalate from a colonial uprising into a world war that, seven
years later, would give birth to the independent United States of America.